Nova Peris is just a 'maid' to Labor

PM, Julia Gillard, has offered supportfor Olympian Nova Peris as a senate candidate in the NT.

POLITICIANS are divided over PM Julia Gillard's decision to back Nova Peris as a candidate, with one critic calling the Olympian a "maid" who will "do the sheets and serve cups of tea".

The Northern Territory's Indigenous Affairs Minister Alison Anderson said the Prime Minister was "dragged kicking to preselect an Aboriginal person."

"I don't think Territorians know her, especially Aboriginal people out in remote Aboriginal communities," she said.

"And I don't think she understands the poverty and disadvantage of the remote Territory. , The Northern Territory News reports.

She said Ms Peris would be treated like a "maid to do the sheets and serve the cups of tea".

Ms Anderson - who was a former NT Labor minister - said Aboriginal people were "welcome on the verandas of the Labor Party".

NT Indigenous Affairs Minister Alison Anderson said Nova Peris' role in Labor will be "just the maid". Picture: Justin Brierty

"The Prime Minister has said that we will have a maid inside the house."

Her claims come after Labor Party members in the Northern Territory are seething at the move to install the Olympian to replace Senator Trish Crossin at the next election.

Fallout from Prime Minister Julia Gillard's decision to go over the heads of the NT branch members of the party and "parachute" Ms Peris into the role continued on today.

Former deputy leader of the Northern Territory, Labor's Syd Stirling, said the move showed "breathtaking arrogance" and held the party in contempt.

"(NT ALP) members count for nought in the view of the prime minister, and that is something to be deplored," Mr Stirling told ABC radio.

Nova Peris is Prime Minister Julia Gillard's preferred Senate Candidate for the Northern Territory. Picture: Kym Smith

Branch president of the ALP in Alice Springs, Rowan Foley, said he was "gutted" by the move and it remained to be seen whether Ms Peris would perform well as a politician.

"I am a little over duds being selected in the Labor Party," Mr Foley said.

The Labor Party's national executive has accepted Nova Peris as a member in the Northern Territory and says she can stand for preselection for first spot on the Territory's senate ticket.

The ALP's national secretary George Wright said the national executive met today to consider Labor's Senate preselection in the NT.

He said the executive resolved to reopen nominations for the position until 5pm (CST) on January 28.

Senator Trish Crossin was only told of the PM's decision to endorse Peris on Monday night. Picture: Kym Smith

They said a preselection ballot would be heard the next day "should this be required''.

Former chief minister of the NT, Paul Henderson, who lost power last year, said the prime minister's move was not the best decision that could have been made.

"At the end of the day there is a lot of rough and tumble in politics," he said.

"Ultimately it should be the rank and file members of the party who are allowed a vote."

Marion Scrymgour, an indigenous woman and former NT politician who had intended challenging Ms Crossin for preselection, said she thought her strong views on the federal government's intervention in Aboriginal communities had counted against her.

Ms Peris said she felt "honoured" to have been selected for her work in health and education rather than her high profile as an athlete.. Picture: Kym Smith

"If Canberra is afraid to have a person stand up in a robust way, have the debate on behalf of people in the Northern Territory, then I don't want to be part of that process," Ms Scrymgour told the ABC.

"I think it is disgraceful," she said.

Prominent Aboriginal sovereignty campaigner Michael Anderson condemned Ms Gillard's choice of Ms Peris.

"I do not have confidence in her ability to stand up for and fight the hard fight that is coming our way," he said in a statement.

"Ms Peris is only being used as a public relations exercise for Labor."

Nova Peris with her children Jack, 9, and Destiny, 11. Picture: Kym Smith

Mr Anderson, who founded the tent embassy in Canberra 40 years ago, said he feared that Ms Peris would be used as a show pony for the Labor party at an international level.

"Ms Nova Peris has not been involved in major political processes, rallies or otherwise. She has been missing in political action all the time," Mr Anderson said.

"I appeal to Ms Nova Peris to rethink this offer so as to ensure that she is not a puppet of Julia Gillard's Labor party, otherwise we need her to come out and simply say that just because she is Aboriginal she is not our voice."

The dumping of Northern Territory senator Trish Crossin to make way for star Labor recruit, has been described as brutal and "a night of the long knives against a senator".

Labor left co-convenor Senator Doug Cameron, a friend of Senator Crossin, said he was disappointed with Ms Gillard's interference in the NT Senate preselection process.

Nova Peris and Rechelle Hawkes after the gold medal presentation at 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games. Peris was the first Indigenous athlete to win Olympic gold. Picture: Trent Parke

"If we have a problem in the Northern Territory with indigenous representation we should have been dealing with this six months ago," he told ABC Radio.

"We should be looking at how we attract talented Aboriginal people into the party, how we can make the party relevant to them."

He said it was not relevant to be "parachuting people in and saying that soothes our conscience in terms of Aboriginal representation."

"It's a short-term fix that belies a deeper problem," he said.

Senator Cameron described Prime Minister Julia Gillard's "captain's pick" as brutal and "a night of the long knives against a senator."

Nova Peris tackles Lee Eun-Kyung of South Korea during the women's field hockey final at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games.

The Prime Minister astonished her own backbenchers when she torpedoed 15-year Senate veteran Trish Crossin, after previously failing to force scandal-plagued Dobell MP Craig Thomson from parliament.

One Labor MP described the move against Ms Crossin as revenge in return for the Senator's support of Mr Rudd.

"It is appalling, she seems to think that the party is her own little play thing, she is settling a score with someone who didn't support her in the leadership ballot, it stinks," the MP said.

The brutal and rare move against a sitting representative by a Labor leader was described by another Labor MP as an "iron lady" manoeuvre that Mr Thomson was spared because of the government's precarious House of Representatives numbers in the hung parliament.

Ms Peris, who as of yesterday was yet to join the Labor party, is set to become the first indigenous Labor representative in Federal Parliament, with an assured top place on the NT Senate ticket in what Ms Gillard described as a "captain's pick."

After Ms Gillard said she was "very troubled" the party was without Aboriginal representation, backbenchers accused her of hypocrisy and of putting political expediency ahead of principle.

Ms Peris today defended the prime minister's call.

"I think with the prime minister yesterday, I think she's handled it the way that she saw - the best way to do it," she told the Seven Network.

"I can't really get involved in the nuts and bolts of the party process but if you look at the Northern Territory, Labor lost its last election ... there was lack of representation from Aboriginal women in the NT."

Ms Peris said she felt "honoured" to have been selected for her work in health and education rather than her high profile as an athlete.

"When I had the talks with Labor officials they said it wasn't what I'd done on the sporting field, with all due respect, it was actually what I had done at the national level with the community work and the amount of stuff with health, youth and education."

However, former NT education minister Marion Scrymgour, who was Australia's first indigenous female minister, had stuck up her hand to run against Ms Crossin for preselection for the Senate ticket.

She received a phone call from Ms Gillard letting her know the race was over.

Ms Scrymgour told the ABC that the prime minister would have her way, but the NT felt robbed of having its say.

"Nova has been away for a long time," Ms Scrymgour said.

"There are many issues up here, sure she's been backwards and forward... you're playing at a different level."

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott said he welcomed more indigenous people in national politics but Ms Gillard had shown poor judgment.

"It's a good goal, getting more indigenous people into the parliament, but there are indigenous members of the Labor Party in the Northern Territory," he told Macquarie Radio.

The prime minister had sidelined a well-respected senator in Ms Crossin and overlooked Ms Scrymgour, who "may well have been able to win a preselection legitimately", he said.

"I don't want to pretend to be an expert on the rather murky machinations of the Labor party but I guess we've seen the prime minister involved in a political hit on Kevin Rudd, a political hit on Harry Jenkins, the former speaker, and now this political hit on Trish Crossin," Mr Abbott said.

Prominent indigenous Australian and former party elder Warren Mundine was set to be given Mark Arbib's vacant NSW Senate seat when he was shoved aside so Bob Carr could be parachuted in to become Foreign Affairs Minister at a time when the government was languishing in opinion polls.

"She had a lay down misere in support for Warren Mundine and she chose to put Carr up, he hasn't done a bad job but he hasn't turned the polls for her," one MP said.

"Warren's selection would have been the right thing to do."

Mr Mundine yesterday said he was delighted for Ms Peris and felt a "wrong had been righted" in the Labor Party after 112 years without an Aboriginal representative in Federal Parliament.

Ms Crossin, who was yesterday chairing the Joint Select Committee on Constitutional Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Peoples, was only told by Ms Gillard she was being replaced on Monday night.

"This action has been taken without consultation or negotiation with the NT branch of the ALP or my input," she said.

The Prime Minister and Labor Party figures, including National Secretary George Wright, had plotted for almost two months to use the National Executive to install Olympic Gold medallist Ms Peris in the top Senate spot for the NT.

It comes just five months after Labor was swept from power in the Northern Territory, indigenous voters abandoning Labor for the Country Liberal Party.

Ms Peris, who runs an academy for indigenous girls, said she was "very honoured and humbled."

Ms Gillard praised Ms Peris, saying that "Nova's selection is a matter of national significance".

Meanwhile, an expanded police investigation called by Kevin Rudd over his swearing YouTube video will hang like a "cloud" over the Prime Minister's office at the start of the parliamentary year, a Labor MP said yesterday.

Mr Rudd has identified possible new witnesses in what he believes was the theft of the footage and the unauthorised release of the video in which he unleashed a string of expletives in out takes of a message he was recording in Chinese.

- with AAP

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